Rolls Royce's electric go-kart takes on Goodwood Motor Circuit

Three weeks ago, the famed Goodwood House estate hosted its annual Festival of Speed. In a couple of months, noteworthy personalities and vehicles like the new Ant-Kahn Barchetta will descend on the UK motoring destination for the Goodwood Revival. In between those staple events, Goodwood has been keeping its asphalt hot with less famous events like this week's Greenpower IET Formula Goblin. Rolls-Royce sponsored a local team of primary schoolers, developing an "ultra luxury" electric go-kart for the event.

Rolls-Royce may not have road-readied the electric Phantom up to this point, but it has helped put a smaller electric vehicle onto the street. In a school project way cooler than the homemade volcanoes and potato clocks we remember from elementary school science classes, Rolls developed the electric mini-racer directly with the group of 9- to 11-year-olds from the March CE Primary School.

The boys and girls on "Team March" finalized the design before Rolls-Royce's team stepped in to help them build the car. Rolls' engineers and designers provided some insight into vehicle engineering, manufacturing and teamwork during the process.

This year's IET Formula Goblin proved to be a record-breaking event. Nearly 90 cars designed by school teams around the UK showed up on Sunday, July 13 to test their mettle at Goodwood. The Typhoon car developed by a team from St. Mary’s School, Clymping, emerged as the overall winner and took home victory at the Lap of Champions, among several other triumphs.

Team March's car performed toward the middle of the pack on the track, but it did snag the prize for "best bodywork." We're guessing the Rolls Royce-inspired grille and badging helped to persuade the judges in its favor. The team was also presented with a set of hand-stitched race overalls made in the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Leathershop. Team members posed for a few group photos in the pit crew-style outfits after touring Rolls' headquarters.

"The team at Rolls-Royce were impressed with the children’s enthusiasm and passion for the project and we have no doubt that they are engineers of the future," says Andrew Ball, Rolls-Royce communications manager and team leader of the project.

Those interested can see the full results of the 2014 IET Formula Goblin on Greenpower's website. Further recap is available in the Greenpower blog post linked below.